Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of calendaring and scheduling and more particularly to calendar entry management in a calendaring and scheduling (C&S) system.
Description of the Related Art
Calendaring systems have formed the core component of personal information management software and firmware applications for decades. Initially, a mere calendar display, modern calendaring systems provide scheduling and alarm functions in addition to full integration with contact management, time entry, billing and project management applications. The typical calendaring application minimally provides a mechanism for scheduling an event to occur on a certain date at a certain time. Generally, the event can be associated with a textual description of the event. More advanced implementations also permit the association of the scheduled event with a particular contact, a particular project, or both. Furthermore, most calendar applications provide functionality for setting an alarm prior to the occurrence of the event, as well as archival features.
Several software products include support for Calendaring & Scheduling (C&S). Known C&S products include Lotus™ Notes™, Microsoft™ Outlook™, and web-based products like Yahoo!™ Calendar™. These products allow one to manage personal events including appointments and anniversaries. C&S products also typically allow one to manage shared events, referred to generally as meetings. Electronic C&S software allows a group of people to negotiate around the scheduling of a proposed event such as a meeting, with the goal of selecting a time that allows most of the group to attend.
Of note, generally two types of events can be scheduled in a C&S system: a stand-alone event and a repeating event. In the former circumstance, the event is set for a single date and time range, while in the latter circumstance, the event is set to repeat at specified intervals for a duration of time. Further, in the latter circumstance a change to the event can be applied onto for a selected instance of the repeating event, or for all instances. In this regard, a change in duration of a selected instance of the repeating event can be applied only to the selected instance of the repeating event, or to all repeating events. However, when a change is applied only to a selected instance of the repeating event, no other changes are applied to other instances of the repeating event in consequence of the change to the selected instance of the repeating event.
Advanced forms of the C&S system provide for the aggregation of different events for a single task or activity. In this regard, multiple different events can be associated with a single task, such as a sequence of meetings over a course of days or even weeks. Yet, unless the meetings of a single task are grouped together as a repeating event, changes to one of the meetings will not impact others of the meetings of the single task. Conversely, if the meetings of the single task are grouped together as a repeating event, a change to one of the meetings can only be applied individually, or to the entire sequence of meetings uniformly.